Readers of the XChange won’t be surprised if I were to say that Kutztown University suffers from a lack vision. The administration has aggressively retrenched faculty members and programs with a logic that escapes nearly everyone who cares to pay attention. What’s KU’s response to the Commonwealth’s need for nurses? Cut the nursing program of course! How does KU ensure that our strong tradition of educating the next generation of teachers is further strengthened to meet the demands of the 20th Century? Why, you cut the Early Learning Center — a signature Lab School that has given KU Early Education graduates a distinct advantage over their counterparts from other institutions! I could go on and on (as you know).
Last week’s APSCUF-KU Representative Council meeting served to take KU’s squirrel logic to new heights (or lows — depending on where you sit, I guess). XChange writer, Amy Lynch-Biniek addressed some of what we heard at Rep Council in her recent post, “Indicators of Good Business.” Amy concluded her discussion of PASSHE’s new performance indicators — especially that one called “faculty productivity,” which means the # of students per faculty member — as follows:
I want knowing my students’ names to be a performance indicator. I want working in material circumstances that facilitate best practices to be a performance indicator. I want a challenging curriculum to be a performance indicator.
But that’s not good business.
Amy is, of course, dead on in her call for quality teaching and best practices. And yet, what struck me as even more bizarre and infuriating was the fact that Kutztown doesn’t even do “good business” right. If we were to follow the 
logic of the performance indicators — let’s take the “transitional” ones for fall 2011 for the moment — “faculty productivity,” as Amy points out, is one of the key indicators (the order of the items does not indicate priority as far as I know). However, on that very same slide we also see “Second-Year Persistence” (that is, do first year students come back) and “Graduation Rates.” In other words, while PASSHE seems keen on continuing its recent push to stuff more students into each class, the System also seems to place some significance on retention. One could say (that “one” wouldn’t be me) that PASSHE recognizes — at least formally — that as you push to increase class size (faculty productitivity) there is the potential that such a move will have an adverse impact on student retention. Because of this, PASSHE includes TWO performance indicators related to retention in order to ensure that PASSHE does not attract an increasing number of students on the one hand, only to have them leave after a couple of years (carrying with them a nice little bag of debt). In a rational world, this make sense. You want to dissuade university administrations from treating students like cash cows in order to secure much coveted performance funds. So, in that world, it’s in the interest of a university President and his/her administration to BOTH increase the number of students in each class while investing in retention strategies and programs to prevent students from leaving once they realize their college experience is dominated by 200 seat auditoriums, not the one-on-one attention that they were promised.
Kutztown’s commitment to increasing class size to meet “faculty productivity” benchmarks is clear: one only need look to the arrival of the Academic Forum and the proposed North Campus Academic Building (aka New Lytle), to see how increasing class size is being written into our built environment. The Kutztown administration’s corresponding commitment to investing in rention strategies is just plain squirrely.
For example, one might think that given PASSHE’s performance indicators, KU might pay attention to the published literature which recommends strategies such as orientation, college transition courses, enrollment managment programs, faculty and peer mentoring, and intervention programs. Such programs would be all the more important since KU expanded to serve a more diverse student body. Best practices should guide KU’s plans. A 
decent plan? Well, this is not just a decent plan, but a paraphrase from a report, “Kutztown University Early Intervention Initiatives,” authored by Dr. Carole Wells (now Vice Provost, then Professor of Psychology) as the Chair of the KU Senate Enrollment Management Committee. The report was written April, 2004 and was part of the last Middle-States report. The report focuses on interviews conducted with six units, highlighting their retention efforts: ACT 101, Advisement Center, Athletics Department, College of Visual and Performing Arts, Student Support Services Program, and Services to Students with Disabilities Office. While both Athletics and the College of VPA reported retention efforts, they are not programs designed for retention purposes. Of the remaining four, the administration has cut two of them this past year: ACT 101 and the Advising Center. SSSP was in danger of being cut had they not been able to secure full grant funding.
Rob Peter to pay Paul? I guess?
So, just to review. KU commits to rapidly expanding class size, not for any academically 
defensible reason, but because the administration wants to increase its share of PASSHE’s performance funding. Given that larger classes can dramatically impact student retention, PASSHE (ostensibly) offsets the “faculty productivity” indicator with two other indicators focusing on retrenchment. Kutztown University decides to continue to increase class size, building more large classrooms, while eliminiating programs designed to retain students. Make sense?
One might ask about the effectiveness of these programs. I’ll let you judge for yourself about the effectiveness of ACT 101…check out one of sister institutions ACT 101 site or contact one of the more than 70 ACT 101 programs at colleges and universities across the state. And what of the Advising Center? The “Kutztown Uniersity Early Intervention Initiatives” report suggests a long-term goal of the university is to “develop a professional advising center” (8). One might object that KU already had a professional Advising Center. But, the administration could retort, “we want one based upon ‘best practices’ as outlined in the ‘published literature’.” Fair point.
The KU Administration must have eagerly awaited the publication of The Handbook of Career Advising
in 2009 by the National Academic Advising Association. Here, administrators committed to best practices and facing concerns about the budget could find the best practices they were seeking. And there it was: “Appendix A: Exemplary Practices: Integrated Academic and Career Advising Centers.” And, they must have been all the more pleased to find on page 326 Kutztown University’s Advising Center!!! That’s right. Without lifting a finger, the KU administration had acheived one of the goals laid out in the 2004 report! Not only that, having the KU Advising Center singled out by the National Academic Advising Association would help build a case for those coveted perfomance funds — especially as a KU “budget crisis” loomed. So, the KU administration made the only choice that made any sense.
They eliminated the Advising Center. (click here to see an excerpt from the Handbook of Carrer Advising, including pages signed by all the books authors…a copy of which was provide to President Cevallos when the book was published).
It’s one thing to have to suck it up and work together in difficult circumstances. What does one do with this?
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Christina J. Steffy
Kevin Mahoney
Amy LB
APSCUF-KU xchange 